Origin of the name grep

[Chuq]

>From here on the usenet side of Unix-wizards it's easy to say that 'unix
trivia' belongs in net.games.trivia. Unfortunately, life is a LOT more
complicated than that because of the different ways the newsgroups are 
handled.

the ARPA people have the disadvantage that something posted here on usenet
to net.unix and net.unix-wizards will show up in their mailboxes twice,
once to INFO-UNIX, once to INFO-UNIX-WIZARDS. Usenet has the advantage that
the software will (should?) only show it once. When ARPA people post to
both, everyone sees it twice. And we also get to see all of those wonderful
messages about mailing lists that people forget to send to *-REQUEST. All
of this, is, of course, trivia in itself and completely beside the point.

What isn't beside the point is the question raised in all of this--
appropriateness of material on a given topic. This has been a subject of
growing controversy on the Usenet side as the volume of material increases.
There basic problem seems to be that there is no well known definition of
appropriate material. On any given subject we seem to be able to find at
least one person who will yell loudly that the material is bogus and
another will yell JUST as loudly that is isn't. I've noticed over the last
six months that we are starting to spend a lot more time yelling about
things and a lot less time discussing them. A lot of newsgroups are quickly
becoming useless because of the sheer volume in them and the fact that most
of that volume is basically useless material. The causes for that are many:

	1) people who respond to things by following up to the group
	instead of mailing. How many articles have you seen with the
	definition of grep in it? Why weren't these mailed to the person
	interested instead of plowing them through the net?

	2) People who are new to the net asking questions that they don't
	know the answer to, but touching on things that were discussed
	before they got on the net. 

	3) people who are sloppy about their postings, putting things in
	the wrong places, asking questions that don't belong on the net
	(hom many places do you know of with a unix system that wouldn't
	have ONE person who knows what GREP means?) and generally not
	thinking about the consequences of their action.

the REAL question is: What can be done?

the real answer is, I don't know. When a mailing list gets large enough on
ARPA, someone takes over as moderator and does some cleanup to make it
tolerable again. This is a BIG advantage of ARPA over usenet. We've tried
in the past to experiment with moderators and every attempt has been yelled
down with screams of dictators and fascists. Usenet people will kill for
the freedom to post garbage, it seems, even if it eventually kills the net.
Because of the lack of coordinated control of the net, I doubt moderators
would work anyway because that assumes that all of the sites will set up
their software to work with moderators. We all know the success of getting
sites to do things like upgrade software and fix bugs, much less install
software to implement controvesial functions.

If we assume that tighter controls on the net are a hopeless wish, the only
other alternative we have is information. We need to teach people to use
the net properly. How? Good question. We've written  and posted guides,
we've mailed comments and suggestions to transgressors, we've posted
suggested, screams, yells, and whimpers, and things keep getting worse. I
certainly don't know what will work anymore, nothing that has been tried
seems to.

Perhaps it is time to simply junk Usenet as a failed prototype and come up
with a better communication scheme. Perhaps things will miraculously fix
themselves. I doubt it, though. I've got lots of questions about things,
but no answers, and the future of Usenet as it stands now looks rather
bleak to me. Anyone else out there have some answers that will work?



-- 
>From the depths of the Crystal Cavern:		Chuq Von Rospach
{amd,decwrl,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!chuqui	nsc!chuqui at decwrl.ARPA

Dreams, dreams, enchanter! Gone with the harp's echo when the strings fall
mute; with the flame's shadow when the fire dies. Be still, and listen.